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The Three Kingdoms and Western Jin
A history of China in the Third Century AD
Internet edition 2003
Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University
NOTE: This article was originally published in
East Asian History
[ISSN 1036-6008], The Australian National University, Canberra no. 1 [June
1991], pp. 1-36, & no. 2 [December 1991], pp. 143-164. Internet publication
last revised in November 2003.
© The whole work is copyright.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research,
criticism, or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may
be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should
be made to the Faculty of Asian Studies at the Australian National University.
Note to the Internet edition 2003: This document contains
the text of an article published in two parts in the Canberra journal
East Asian History: Number 1, June 1991, 1-36, and Number 2, December
1991, 143-164. Maps and annotations are included, but not characters.
I have added some references to works in the field published since 1991,
but have not at this stage attempted a comprehensive bibliography. In
a letter of 1994, Professor Fang Beichen of Chengdu University provided
some comments; I am most grateful to him and have made a number of changes
in accordance with his advice.
Note to the original article 1991: This work has been
prepared as a chapter for the second volume of The Cambridge History
of China. I present it here in preliminary form because I believe there
is room for a general survey of the third century, which saw the transition
from a long-unified empire to a comparable period of disunity and conflict,
and because I know that I shall benefit from the comments and criticisms
of others. I emphasise that the piece is designed as a discussion of
events: I refer occasionally to matters of literature and philosophy,
but there are others expert in those fields, and I have sought only
to provide a historical background for their analysis.
Table of contents
Part 1: The Formation of the Three Kingdoms (189-220)
The successes of Cao Cao
It is not often in history that a major change
can be dated so precisely as the fall of the empire of Han. On the evening
of 24 September 189 the general Dong Zhuo, camped outside the capital
city of Luoyang, saw flames rise up against the sky. He led his army
forward to deal with the disorders, and at that moment the power of
the imperial government was ended.
When Dong Zhuo entered the capital, he did
so without formal authority, but he faced no legitimate opposition,
and his seizure of power turned the political structure of the state
back to its roots. Despite cosmological and political theories of the
time, the essential factor in government had been the military authority
of the emperor. The founders of the dynasty, Emperor Gao of Former Han
and Emperor Guangwu of Later Han, had gained the throne by victory in
civil war, and their descendants had ruled in succession just because,
in the last resort, their armies would obey their imperial commands.
Now, however, that authority was gone. On 28 September, Dong Zhuo deposed
the young emperor Liu Bian and placed his half-brother Liu Xie, Emperor
Xian, upon the throne. Within a few weeks there was open rebellion and
the whole of eastern China was cut off from the new government at Luoyang.
The impetus for opposition to Dong Zhuo, however,
came as much from personal ambition as from any desire to restore the
power of Han. Leaders of the rebels in the east included Yuan Shao and
Yuan Shu, who controlled a network of influence based on the high official
status of their family and their wealth of landed property, and men
such as Cao Cao, not so well regarded, but with sufficient resources
of family property to raise his own private army. Many of the regular
officials of the provinces were reluctant to break the peace, but the
local pressure was overwhelming, and those who did not join the rebels
were swiftly eliminated. And there were, of course, numbers of fighting
men and adventurers, some of them with pretensions to an official position,
who took advantage of the growing turmoil to seek power and profit on
their own initiative.
In 191 the army of Sun Jian, under the command
of Yuan Shu, drove Dong Zhuo from Luoyang west to Chang'an, and in 192
Dong Zhuo was assassinated by his former body-guard Lü Bu. The
central government fell into complete disorder and played no further
part in the affairs of the rest of the empire, and the alliance in the
east broke up into an anarchy of warfare across the whole of the plain.
In this first stage of the wars, there were
a multitude of contenders for success or survival. From his base at
Ye city in Ji province, Yuan Shao extended his power north of the Yellow
River, while further south, between the Yellow River and the Huai River,
there was a tense and vicious conflict between Yuan Shu, Cao Cao, Tao
Qian the Governor of Xu province, Lü Bu from the northwest and
Liu Bei, a man of poor family who yet claimed descent from the rulers
of Former Han. Yuan Shu was driven south of the Huai River in 193, Tao
Qian was destroyed in 194, and Liu Bei surrendered in 196. As his power
spread, Cao Cao's army combined family connections, gentry allies, soldiers
of fortune and surrendered rebels, and by 198, when he captured Lü
Bu and killed him, Cao Cao had no further rival in the southern part
of the Yellow plain.
Of those early opponents, Tao Qian was an
appointed official who could claim no strong local support against a
determined enemy, while at the other end of the scale Lü Bu and
Liu Bei were soldiers of fortune who relied for success entirely upon
their military prowess and reputation. They were not regarded as men
of good social position, they did not have notable support among the
gentry, and they failed to attract a substantial body of advisers and
administrators to their service. So their power was brittle, and no
match in the longer term for a competent opponent who could also offer
some form of stable government. More commonly, such a leader without
background would subordinate himself to a man of national authority,
and it was for this reason that Sun Jian, who had obtained a large army
in 189 but who came from an insignificant family of the southeast, accepted
Yuan Shu as his chief and fought thereafter under his orders.
Sun Jian was killed early in the civil war,
in a campaign against Liu Biao the Governor of Jing province, and in 193 Yuan Shu was driven south into Yang province.
From his new capital at Shouchun in present-day Anhui, he made some
attempt to regain the ground he had lost north of the Huai River, and
in 197 he took title as emperor of a new dynasty. Yuan Shu's claim,
however, was rejected even by his allies, and every hand turned against
him. Abandoned by almost all his followers, he died in the summer of
199. Though the empire had become a gigantic battleground, and the emperor
himself was a powerless puppet, the imperial title was still reserved
to the house of Liu.
In 196 Emperor Xian made his escape from the
squabbling warlords of Chang'an, and with a combination of luck and
imagination Cao Cao took him under protection and control. Playing the
hand far more carefully than had Dong Zhuo, Cao Cao established the
formalities of an imperial court at present-day Xuchang in Henan, and he justified his actions as a loyal
minister of Han.
In the summer of 200, after months of planning
and preparation, Yuan Shao and Cao Cao met in a long-drawn campaign
about the small city of Guandu, south of the Yellow River near present-day
Kaifeng. Cao Cao's forces were heavily outnumbered, but they held their
defence for more than a month, and then a fortunate raid against the
enemy's supply lines broke the morale of Yuan Shao's forces and drove
them in disorder to the north. Two years later, Yuan Shao died, his
sons quarrelled about the inheritance, and Cao Cao took advantage of
the confusion. In 204 he captured Ye city, and by 207, after a brilliant
campaign beyond the frontier against the non-Chinese Wuhuan, he had
established control over all the Yellow plain.
Cao Cao was a fine general and a remarkable
politician, and he has acquired a legendary status in Chinese tradition.
To appreciate the reality of his achievement, however, we must recognise
the pattern of conflict within which he gained his success.
The ramshackle pattern of military recruitment
had considerable effect upon techniques of warfare and upon the structure
of politics for generations to come. Despite theories and formalities
of ranks and grades, the basic fighting unit was the group which had
gathered or been conscripted about some leader, and each unit was accompanied
by a mass of camp-followers, wives and children, cooks and prostitutes,
peddlers and gamblers, and a few who specialised in care of the sick
and wounded. At the core of command, each chieftain was supported by
a group of companions, close relatives or old friends and comrades,
whom he could rely upon completely and who served as a focus for the
mass of his troops.
In these circumstances, success in combat
depended very largely upon the personal courage of the individual commander,
the degree with which he could encourage his men to follow him, and
the ability to rally them to his standard even after serious defeat.
Though accounts of the time exaggerate the heroism of the leaders, it
does appear that the pattern of battle required a direct attack by small
body of men, who sought to "break the enemy line" and throw
the opposing body of troops into disorder and flight. The officers who
could embark on such an enterprise were certainly brave and physically
skilful, but they were also likely to be violent and egotistical, and
they were not necessarily competent administrators or thoughtful counsellors.
The troops these men commanded were unwieldy
and uncertain. As authority depended primarily upon prestige and personality,
no individual could exercise real control over more than a few hundred
or perhaps a thousand men, and any substantial force, perhaps thirty
thousand men, must be ordered through a long hierarchy of command, from
the leading general to individual units. With limited means of communication,
there were constant problems of discipline and supply, while such a
military mass was extremely difficult to manoeuvre in the face of battle,
where even a minor set-back could produce loss of morale and swift collapse.
And though the question was often ignored, there was serious danger
of disease amongst such a host of men gathered together. To a considerable
degree, armies of that time carried with them the seeds of their own
destruction.
In more general, even philosophical terms,
there has been some debate on the nature of Cao Cao's social or class
position, and his significance as the representative of middle and lower
land-holders and gentry as opposed to the members of old and powerful
clans represented and championed by Yuan Shao. Indeed it is true that
the perception of social status as a source of authority was sometimes
more important than practical matters, for the dominance of gentry families
in the political society of Later Han had brought a general expectation
that local and national authority was reserved to men of lineage. On
the other hand, though family background could determine whether a man
had sufficient status to maintain an independent command and attract
useful administrative support, it is too simplistic to base analysis
purely on questions of class conflict. Many contemporaries regarded
the ambitions of the Yuan as excessive and deluded, and Cao Cao was,
sensibly, more cautious. The Cao and their kinsmen of the Xiahou family
were parvenus compared to great lineages such as the Yuan, but Cao Cao's
father had been Grand Commandant, most senior position in the imperial
administration, Cao Cao's first recruitment of troops was based upon
family resources, and he had sufficient standing to seek and achieve
an independent position.
Once he had entered the contest, Cao Cao's
great achievement was to gain and hold the loyalty of a vast number
of different commanders and their followers, and to maintain his disparate
forces as a coherent military power. This was a matter of personal ability,
and when he had established his authority south of the Yellow River
it was upon the basis of that regional command that he mounted his opposition
to Yuan Shao and other rivals. In the political and military manoeuvring
which culminated in the decisive battle of Guandu, there was discussion
of Yuan Shao's claim to great family and of Cao Cao's talent as a leader,
but this was rather in the nature of propaganda than the echoes of a
Marxist confrontation: the critical conflict was between the warlord
north of the Yellow River and his rival to the south, and Cao Cao gained
the victory because he organised his resources more effectively and
commanded his army with greater skill.
By the end of 207, after his conquest of the
territory formerly controlled by Yuan Shao, Cao Cao had established
government over half the population of the empire, and he controlled
the heart-land of China. From this central position, he was faced by
a scattering of opponents, none of them in close alliance and each one
weaker than himself. In the northeast, the southern part of Manchuria,
Gongsun Du had established a separatist state, and he was succeeded
by his son Gongsun Kang in 204. North across the frontier and in the
region of present-day Shanxi, imperial control had largely given way
to a medley of non-Chinese tribes, in which the remnants of the Xiongnu
state struggled for survival against the erratic power of the Xianbi.
In Liang 2D province,
about present-day Gansu, rebellion which had broken out in 184 had been
restricted to that territory, but the confusion had been made worse
by the collapse of government at Chang'an after the death of Dong Zhuo.
To the west, in present-day Sichuan, Liu Yan, the Governor of Yi province
appointed in 188, had been succeeded by his son Liu Zhang in 194. Immediately
to the north of Liu Zhang's territory, Hanzhong commandery on the upper
Han River in present-day southern Shenxi was under the theocratic government
of Zhang Lu, leader of the Five Pecks of Rice sect, recognised by the
present-day Taoist church as third patriarch of the Celestial Masters.
Immediately after his campaign to settle the
north, however, Cao Cao turned his attention southwards against Liu
Biao, Governor of Jing province, and the young warlord Sun Quan who
controlled the lower course of the Yangzi.
At the beginning of Later Han, the critical
phase of civil war had been the struggle for command of the Yellow plain,
and when the future Emperor Guangwu had gained that territory it was
only a matter of time before the rival warlords on the periphery fell
under his control. In 208, as Cao Cao embarked on his campaign to the
south, it was generally expected, even by his opponents, that the same
pattern would be followed once again. By a combination of changed circumstances
and the fortunes of war, however, the unity of the empire was not restored
so quickly, and it was indeed very long delayed.
The
Red Cliffs campaign (208)
We have noticed Sun Jian, former Grand Administrator of Changsha and
then general in the service of Yuan Shu. After his death on campaign
against Liu Biao, his forces were largely taken over by Yuan Shu but
a few years later, about 194, his son Sun Ce, then aged eighteen, took
service with Yuan Shu. He was given command of some of the soldiers
who had followed his father, and was sent to join operations south of
the Yangzi.
The Sun came from Wu commandery in present-day
Zhejiang, but they were not a leading family of that region, and Sun
Jian had made his career as a fighting soldier. In similar fashion,
Sun Ce established his position in the southeast essentially through
his own remarkable military skill. By 198, at the age of twenty-three,
he had declared independence from his former patron Yuan Shu, now a
usurping emperor, and he held control of Danyang, Wu and Kuaiji commanderies,
a stretch of territory from present-day Nanjing past Hangzhou Bay, including
some outposts on the coast of Fujian. From this base Sun Ce extended
his power westwards, and by 200 he had taken Yuzhang commandery about
the present-day Poyang Lake in Jiangxi, and Lujiang commandery north
of the Yangzi.
In this series of campaigns, Sun Ce had to
deal not only with the semi-regular troops of rival administrators,
but also with bandits, with local self-defence groups, and with powerful
clans which had gathered their own private armies. In many respects
the warfare was as much a matter of local rivalry as a formal struggle
for power, and in 200, soon after his conquest of Poyang, Sun Ce was
ambushed and assassinated by former retainers of a defeated local family
from Wu.
Sun Ce was succeeded by his younger brother
Sun Quan, at that time eighteen years old. The warlord state, however,
was sufficiently well established that it survived the immediate crisis,
and Sun Quan swiftly established his authority in the territory his
brother had left him. By 203 he was expanding further to the west, and
early in 208 he destroyed Huang Zu, the subordinate commander of Liu
Biao who controlled the territory about present-day Wuhan on the middle
Yangzi.
On the eve of Cao Cao's campaign against the
south, therefore, Sun Quan held a curve of territory from Hangzhou Bay
to the Yangzi estuary and west towards Wuhan. He had, however, no strong
position north towards the Huai River, and much of the hill country
in the south was inaccessible, inhabited by the non-Chinese Yue people
and by refugees from official levies or the disturbances of war. On
the other hand, whereas Sun Quan's power was only a fraction of that
which Cao Cao could mobilise, his navy on the Yangzi was experienced
and effective, and had established a local superiority.
Cao Cao's first opponent was Liu Biao, Governor
of Jing province. Liu Biao had been appointed to that position by the
Han government under control of Dong Zhuo, but after the early 190s,
when he had repelled the attack of Sun Jian and Yuan Shu, he played
no substantial role in the civil war of the north. The territory formally
under his control extended south from his capital at present-day Xiangfan
down the Han River to the Yangzi, and then south again up the valley
of the Xiang River, but in practice his authority beyond the Yangzi
was tenuous, while his eastern flank was under threat from Sun Quan.
In the autumn of 208, moreover, Liu Biao died.
Through political manoeuvring, the succession was taken by his younger
son Liu Zong, and the elder Liu Qi was left discontented and rebellious.
As Cao Cao approached, Liu Zong's supporters urged him to surrender,
and indeed he had no alternative. Cao Cao took over the province, made
his own appointments to the local government, and gathered many of the
leading officials and scholars at Liu Biao's court into his own service.
There was, however, a party of opposition,
to some degree centred about Liu Qi, but inspired primarily by Liu Bei,
who had fled from the north some years before. Liu Bei attempted to
rally the dissidents and establish a line of defence on the Yangzi.
Chased, caught and heavily defeated by Cao Cao, however, he turned to
seek support from Sun Quan.
It was not an easy decision. Liu Bei and Liu
Qi were in exile and retreat, and although Liu Bei's lieutenant Guan
Yu had collected much of the Jing province fleet from the Han River,
Cao Cao had control of the naval base at Jiangling on the Yangzi. As
he brought his army and his new fleet eastwards in pursuit, he also
sent messengers calling Sun Quan to surrender.
Sun Quan was uncertain of his best course
of action, and there was considerable debate at his headquarters. He
decided, however, to send troops forward under the command of Zhou Yu,
to join Liu Bei and Liu Qi, and to test Cao Cao's strength. If their
defence should be unsuccessful, he could expect to withdraw most of
his men, and he would still have a reserve army with which to negotiate
terms.
The allies met Cao Cao's forces at the Red
Cliffs, on the Yangzi between present-day Wuhan and Yueyang, and for
a few days the two groups faced one another across the river. The men
from the north had already taken part in a long campaign with several
forced marches, they were not used to the southern waterways and marshlands,
and we are told there was sickness in the camp. Some of the army and
all of the fleet had formerly served Liu Biao, and many must have been
undecided about their new master. For his own part, Cao Cao probably
regarded the operation as a reconnaissance in force: if he was successful
in defeating the allies and driving them to separate surrenders, so
much the better if not, he could withdraw and look for another occasion
in the future.
Cao Cao's first attack was driven back and
then the wind changed against him and Zhou Yu sent in an attack with
fire-ships. In the technology of warfare of that time, fire was a common
weapon, and when used in the right circumstance it could create large-scale
destruction. Whatever preparations Cao Cao may have made against the
threat, he was compelled to abandon his position and retreat, and the
allies enhanced their victory with tales of slaughter. The battle at
the Red Cliffs has become one of the most celebrated of Chinese history,
it is the theme of several plays and poems, and the centre-piece of
the great historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
It is very likely that the account of Cao
Cao's defeat has been exaggerated, and literary tradition has embellished
the story out of all proportion, but later events justify the engagement
as one of the decisive battles of Chinese history. As Cao Cao retreated,
he left garrisons behind him, but in the following year Zhou Yu's army
captured Jiangling, and the southerners thereafter faced no serious
threat to their naval control of the Yangzi. Cao Cao and his successors
made several attempts to break the river defences, but they could not
match the strategic position or the tactical skills of their enemies.
Neither side may have realised it at the time, but the Red Cliffs campaign
was the last chance for many years to re-unite the empire, for it was
control of the middle Yangzi which meant the difference between survival
and surrender in the south.
The
struggle for the middle Yangzi
With the fall of Jiangling, Cao Cao's territory
in the south was restricted to the Han River, with Xiangyang as his
centre of defence. Sun Quan, as chief of the allies, naturally expected
to profit from their success, but while his attention was devoted to
his own position in the east, with an unsuccessful sortie northwards
across the Huai River, Liu Bei and his chief adviser Zhuge Liang seized
the commanderies south of the Yangzi, and established a dominant position
in the southern part of Jing province. In 210, Zhou Yu died, and Sun
Quan had no one of comparable authority to take his place. He was compelled
to transfer the territory of Jiangling to Liu Bei, and he retained only
the eastern region from Wuhan to the Dongting Lake.
In 211, Cao Cao turned to the northwest, broke
the back of a warlord coalition in the Wei River valley, and re-occupied
the territory about Chang'an. Faced with this threat to his north, Liu
Zhang invited Liu Bei to come to his aid in Yi province and assist him,
first against Zhang Lu in Hanzhong and then in due course against Cao
Cao. Liu Bei accepted the invitation, but one year later he forced a
quarrel with Liu Zhang and turned against him. In 214 Liu Zhang was
compelled to surrender, and Liu Bei took over his territory.
During this period Cao Cao and Sun Quan had
engaged one another in the southeast, but Cao Cao's forces had no success
against Sun Quan's position on the Yangzi, while Sun Quan was unable
to break the line of the Huai River. In particular, Cao Cao's administrator
Liu Fu established agricultural garrisons about Shouchun and Hefei,
and the settled peasant militia gave a long-term stability to the defence
of the region. Further south, in campaigns against the non-Chinese people
and the refugees or renegades of present-day southern Zhejiang and Fujian,
Sun Quan's officers, notably He Qi and Lu Xun, began a process of conquest
and colonisation which increased the territory of the state and added
considerably to the human resources that could be taxed and recruited
for corvee service and war.
When Liu Bei seized power in Yi province,
however, Sun Quan turned his attention again to the middle Yangzi, and
demanded a greater share of the territory in the basin of the Xiang
River. Apart from the resentment with which he had watched his erstwhile
weaker ally gain territory in Sichuan, it was clear that the resources
he currently commanded were not sufficient to maintain long-term defence
against the north. In 215 Sun Quan's officer Lü Meng was sent to
seize the southern commanderies of Jing province. Liu Bei's general
Guan Yu brought an army in counter-attack, and the rival warlords agreed
on a new settlement, establishing the Xiang River as the boundary between
them. Both were concerned by the threat from the north, and Liu Bei
was also distracted by the situation in Yi province, where Cao Cao's
attack from Chang'an across the Qin Ling range divide compelled the
surrender of Zhang Lu in Hanzhong, and opened the way for a direct attack
on Liu Bei.
For the time being, however, Cao Cao was chiefly
concerned with the organisation of the territory now under his control,
with the suppression of some internal plots against his authority, and
with consolidation of his power as the dominant figure at the refugee
court of Han. Imperial Chancellor since 208, in 214 he received the
title Duke of Wei, and in 217 he became King of Wei and appointed his
eldest son Cao Pi as Heir. Cao Cao's major military activity in this
period was one more attack against Sun Quan's position on the lower
Yangzi, but although he compelled Sun Quan to make formal surrender
and acknowledge him as king, the diplomatic coup had no effect upon
the military relationship of the two sides nor upon Sun Quan's freedom
of action. In that year, moreover, a major outbreak of plague, which
may have begun among the armies on the Yangzi, also attacked the court
and took many of the leading scholars of the day.
For the immediate political future of China,
the events of 219 were critical. At the beginning of that year, after
a long campaign of stalemate, Liu Bei defeated and killed Cao Cao's
general Xiahou Yuan in Hanzhong. Cao Cao brought reinforcements in an
attempt to rectify the damage, but he could not regain the territory,
and he was compelled to retreat across the Qin Ling divide. So Liu Bei's
borders were secured against the north, and in celebration of the victory
he proclaimed himself King of Hanzhong.
To the east, the enemies of Wei sought to
take advantage of Cao Cao's misfortune in Hanzhong. Sun Quan made another
unsuccessful attack against Hefei, but Guan Yu on the middle Yangzi
presented a far more serious danger. From his base at Jiangling, he
attacked up the line of the Han River, and he was fortunate to encounter
heavy summer rains and flooding. One of Cao Cao's armies, caught in
the open, was washed away, and Guan Yu brought his ships to the walls
of Fan city, at present-day Xiangfan, last obstacle to an advance north
into Nanyang and the heart of Cao Cao's power. The garrison in Fan city
was isolated and outnumbered, and their fortifications were eroded by
water, but they held out for three months, and then Guan Yu himself
was attacked and destroyed.
Until this time, despite the incident of 214,
Sun Quan and his chief commander in Jing province, Lu Su, had agreed
their best policy was to maintain the alliance with Liu Bei rather than
face Cao Cao alone. Sun Quan, however, was not satisfied with the territory
he had acquired, and he was concerned that his nominal ally in the west
might soon become as much of a threat as his enemy in the north. When
Lu Su died in 217, Sun Quan appointed Lü Meng, who had served as
a personal agent for him in the past, to take his place, and although
they continued to speak fair to Guan Yu, the Sun group was looking for
some opportunity to act against him.
In the autumn of 219, as Guan Yu was committed
to the attack up the Han River and the siege of Fan city, Lü Meng
prepared a secret invasion and struck westwards along the Yangzi against
Jiangling. The surprise was complete, Guan Yu's position collapsed in
ruins, he himself was killed and the greater part of his army surrendered.
Cao Cao's position in the Han valley was restored, and Sun Quan held
all the territory east of the Yangzi gorges.
At the beginning of the following year, 220,
Cao Cao died at the age of sixty-six sui,
and he was succeeded by his son Cao Pi. In the winter, on 11 December
220 by Western reckoning, the new ruler of Wei received the abdication
of the last emperor of Han and proclaimed his own accession to the Mandate.
Six months later, on 15 May 221, Liu Bei in Sichuan made a rival claim
as emperor of the continuing house of Han: from the chief commandery
of that province, his dynasty is generally known as Shu-Han.
For the time being, Sun Quan accepted the
continued suzerainty of Wei and recognised Cao Pi's new honour. In exchange
he received enfeoffment as King of Wu, but his chief concern was to
hold the northern state in benevolent neutrality while he sought to
deal with the inevitable attack from Liu Bei, seeking revenge for the
destruction of Guan Yu and reconquest of the territory he had lost in
Jing province. In this, Sun Quan was successful, for Cao Pi was new
to power and to the usurping title, and could not afford to turn too
ostentatiously against his own feudatory.
The attack from Shu against Wu came at the
end of 221, and in the spring of 222 Liu Bei arrived to take command
of operations. Lü Meng, Sun Quan's commander against Guan Yu, had
been ill at the time of that campaign and died soon afterwards, and
Sun Quan appointed his son-in-law and close confidant Lu Xun, a man
of good gentry and official family, to take responsibility for the defence
of the west. Against the advice of his subordinates, Lu Xun waited until
Liu Bei was fully committed along the Yangzi below the Yangzi Gorges,
but in the sixth Chinese month, at the end of the summer, he made a
series of attacks with fire against the flank of Liu Bei's extended
positions, and the army of Shu-Han was broken. Liu Bei made his escape
to Bodi "White Emperor" city, near present-day Fengjie in
Sichuan, and he died there in the following year.
After the destruction of Guan Yu in 219, the
defeat of Liu Bei in 222 confirmed Sun Quan's control of Jing province,
and Sun Quan wasted little time in reneging on his fealty to Wei. He
failed to send the hostages he had promised, and when Cao Pi came south
to enforce the pledge Sun Quan's armies defied him with success on both
the middle and the lower Yangzi. As sign of his independence, Sun Quan
announced his own reign-title, and in the winter of that year, the beginning
of 223, completing a brilliant series of diplomatic manoeuvres, he negotiated
peace and friendship with the government of Liu Bei.
In military terms, the division of the empire of Han between three
rival states was complete. There were individual warlords and rulers
on the perimeters of the former empire, but the essential boundaries
had been drawn. In the west, the victory of Liu Bei in Hanzhong had
brought the upper Han valley under his control, and set the lines of
battle in that area along the Qin Ling range divide, south of the valley
of the Wei River. On the middle Yangzi, Jing province of Han, the major
possibilities of manoeuvre were ended: Shu-Han was restricted to the
west of the Yangzi Gorges while Wei and Wu shared a hostile, but largely
static, frontier about the lower Han River. In the southeast, Cao Cao's
establishment of agricultural garrisons, and the consistent failure
of Sun Quan's sorties against Hefei and Shouchun, confirmed the grasp
of Wei along the Huai, but Sun Quan's naval power on the Yangzi was
never seriously threatened, and between the two lines of defence there
stretched a desolate no-man's land.
Part 2: Rival Empires (220-265)
Hitherto, we have considered the division of Han largely in terms of
the military geography which determined the frontiers of the three successor
states. We must appreciate, however, that the very existence of these
three "kingdoms" was in many respects an unexpected development.
In former times, the brief interludes of civil war after the end of
Qin and the fall of Wang Mang had been followed by swift reconstruction
of a new government for the whole of China, and though the second century
of Later Han had seen much discussion concerning the Mandate of Heaven,
it had been generally accepted that the house of Liu should be revived
or replaced, not that its inheritance would be divided. In many respects,
the most interesting question about the end of Han is not why the dynasty
fell, but why the unified empire was not restored. Any full answer to
this question requires more than simple discussion of the chances of
politics and war. We must consider the nature of the states which emerged
from the ruin of Han.
Wu
and the south
At the beginning of the first century AD, during the civil war which
followed the fall of Wang Mang, the rulers of the south had offered
no substantial resistance to the victor in the north, and at the end
of the second century, during the time of civil war which followed the
fall of Han, Sun Ce owed his initial success to the natural defences
of the river and the weakness of his immediate northern neighbour Yuan
Shu. By the time of the Red Cliffs campaign, however, the state of Sun
Quan was strong enough to hold off a direct attack from the north.
The territory then controlled by Sun Quan
- the commanderies of Yuzhang, Danyang, Wu and Kuaiji - had contained
less than two million people at the end of Former Han, but in the middle
of the second century AD their number was assessed at more than three
million. This increase of Chinese population south of the Yangzi was
a critical factor in the division of the empire after the fall of the
Han dynasty, for these human resources, under competent warlord government
in that strategic situation, proved sufficient for survival.
The growth of population in this region was
part of a general trend during Han, and the demographic change may be
traced in census records preserved from the beginning of the first century
and the middle of the second century AD. At the time of the census recorded
in the treatises of Hou Han shu, the registered population of the empire
was a little less than fifty million individuals. Of this total, the
southern parts of Jing province and Yang province provinces, later controlled
by Wu, contained some seven million, and Jiao province in the far south
had perhaps one and a half million. Numbers were affected by changes
on the frontiers, by the toll of civil war and by migration from one
region to another, but on the basis of those Later Han records the population
of the territory of Wu was one-sixth of the former empire; the northern
state of Wei could claim four times that number - two-thirds of the
old empire.
In this situation, though Sun Quan's state
had based its early success on the demographic changes of the Later
Han period, its survival depended on an energetic development of the
territory and the people under its control. This consideration gave
urgency to the expansion into Jing province, culminating in the destruction
of Guan Yu in 219 and the successful defence against Liu Bei in 222,
while at the same time, the government of Wu extended its influence
into the far south.
Jiao province of Later Han occupied present-day
Guangdong and Guangxi, together with the Red River delta and the coast
of Vietnam as far south as Hué. It was first brought under the
control of China by the conquests of the First Emperor of Qin at the
end of the third century BC, but the fall of Qin allowed the émigré
Zhao Tuo to establish his independent state. The province was reconquered
by the armies of Emperor Wu of Former Han at the end of the second century
BC, and Emperor Guangwu's general Ma Yuan restored the authority of
Later Han, but growing weakness in the central government during the
second century had seen a number of local disorders and permitted the
development of considerable local control. Towards the end of the century,
Shi Xie, leader of a family of Chinese descent, established a personal
hegemony through all the region. His capital, Longbian near present-day
Hanoi, was a major trading centre, Shi Xie was admired for his authority
and his scholarship, the splendour of his court was celebrated, and
it became a place of refuge from the warfare of central China.
For several years, the leaders in the north
had other things to occupy them. After 200, however, Shi Xie appears
to have relinquished close control of the eastern part of the province,
present-day Guangdong, and there was some conflict between Cao Cao,
now dominant in the north, and Liu Biao of Jing province. Each party
sent nominees for positions of local authority, and Cao Cao allied himself
directly with Shi Xie.
In 210, after the death of Liu Biao and the
defeat of Cao Cao at the Red Cliffs, Sun Quan appointed his officer
Bu Zhi as Governor. From his base at Panyu, present-day Guangzhou/Canton,
Bu Zhi established relations with Shi Xie, and Shi Xie sent tribute
and hostages to Sun Quan. Now more than seventy years old, he was evidently
content with a limited, if profitable, role in the Red River delta.
Certainly, though Vietnamese tradition records him as "King Si",
he appears to have made no attempt to emulate the political achievement
of Zhao Tuo and the separate state of Nanyue four centuries earlier.
In 220, Bu Zhi was succeeded by Lü Dai,
who confirmed the position in Nanhai and Cangwu commanderies, and extended
his influence over present-day Guangdong and Guangxi. When Shi Xie died
in 226, Lü Dai was ready to remove the last vestiges of his power.
Pressing against the formal position of the Shi clan, he forced a quarrel
and arrived at the Red River with an army and a fleet. When the sons
of Shi Xie surrendered, Lü Dai had them executed and sent their
heads to Sun Quan. His authority was confirmed along all the southern
shore as far as present-day Cambodia, the sea trade into southeast Asia
was peacefully maintained, and the prosperity of the Shi family at the
entrepot in northern Vietnam was now continued to the advantage of Wu.
With the acquisition of this territory in
the far south, Sun Quan obtained a source of notable wealth, and secured
his frontiers to the west and north. When Liu Bei died in 223, the government
in Shu-Han, now controlled by the regent Zhuge Liang, confirmed the
arrangement of peace and alliance, and though. Cao Pi made several attacks
on the line of the Yangzi, he was compelled each time to withdraw. In
226 Cao Pi died, and chief military attention shifted northwest to the
frontier against Shu-Han along the Wei River valley in present-day Shenxi.
In this period of stability and prosperity, on 23 June 229, Sun Quan
assumed the imperial title for himself.
In the context of traditional Chinese history,
the claim is an eccentric one. The Cao family could assert that they
held the greater part of the old empire, and their succession was legitimated
by the abdication of Emperor Xian, while Liu Bei in the southwest claimed
to represent the true imperial clan. Sun Quan had no such justification.
His territory was on the fringes of the empire, and he had earlier accepted
his title as king of Wu, and his calendar, from the usurping Wei. Sun
Quan based his claim upon two predications: that the imperial position,
vacated by Han, had not been filled by any worthy successor and that
his own accession was justified by the virtue of his government, in
particular by his concern for the people. He dismissed the claims of
Wei by describing the Cao family as criminal usurpers, and without specific
reference to the claim of Liu Bei, he stated simply that the fortunes
of Han were ended, and the claim to succession had thus become irrelevant.
No traditional historian has accepted Sun
Quan's claim to the Mandate of Heaven. Much of the formal argument is
based upon the incongruity of the regnal calendar, overlapping with
Wei at the beginning and with Jin at the end, but it is, in any case,
difficult to regard the imperial pretensions of Wu as very much more
than a facade. The ministers and generals of Sun Quan were given titles
from the official hierarchy of Han, and his capital became a centre
of culture and wealth, but the essential structure of government was
based upon an alliance of powerful local families under the hegemony
of the Sun clan, and civilian authority was subordinated very closely
to military power.
Sun Quan did attempt to expand his empire
beyond his immediate territory. He received emissaries from Funan and
other countries of the south, he re-established a Chinese presence on
Hainan island, he sent an expedition to Taiwan, and possibly also to
the Ryukyus, and he sought to establish alliance with the Gongsun warlords
of Liaodong in southern Manchuria. None of these initiatives, however,
achieved real success, and the later military history of Wu was not
impressive.
Despite several attempts, the armies of Wu
were unable to break the defences of Wei along the Huai River. There
were two occasions, in 255 and 257, when the city of Shouchun was seized
by rebels against the political dominance of the Sima family in Wei,
but the southerners could provide no useful assistance, and in each
case the city was recaptured and the northern position was confirmed.
For the most part, the strategy of Wu was
defensive, with garrisons and naval bases along the line of the Yangzi.
After some indecision, Sun Quan established his capital at Jianye, present-day
Nanjing, which provided a centre for control of the lower Yangzi. Defence
of the middle Yangzi and the lower Han River was based on the new city
of Wuchang, downstream from the present metropolis of Wuhan, with a
military government of wide independent power. For the most part, the
traditional Han hierarchy of provinces, commanderies and counties was
adequate for local administration, but on the frontier territory with
Wei and Shu-Han there were also Area Commanders (dudu)
to maintain defence along the Yangzi.
After a government of more than fifty years,
Sun Quan died in 252. His long reign provided a welcome stability, but
it also brought difficulties for his successors and misfortune on his
death. His eldest son and Heir Apparent, Sun Deng, had died in 241.
The next surviving son, Sun He, was appointed to replace him, but that
candidacy was bedevilled by factional feuding. In 250 Sun He was deposed,
and the elderly Sun Quan was persuaded to pass the succession to his
youngest son, the seven-year-old Sun Liang, under the guardianship of
Zhuge Ke.
This was a recipe for further intrigue and
instability. In 253, eighteen months after the death of Sun Quan, and
following a disastrous attack against Hefei, Zhuge Ke was assassinated
by orders of Sun Liang under the influence of Sun Jun, a distant cadet
of the imperial family. When Sun Jun died three years later, his cousin
Sun Lin succeeded to the dominant position at court. In 258 Sun Liang,
now in his mid teens, sought to rid himself of the over-powerful minister,
but he was dethroned and replaced by Sun Xiu, sixth son of Sun Quan
and some twenty-two years old. A few months later, Sun Xiu arranged
a successful coup against Sun Lin and took power himself.
The government of Sun Xiu was not particularly
effective, and his death in 264 came just at the time the state of Shu-Han
surrendered to Wei. In that period of emergency, Sun Hao, son of the
former Heir Apparent Sun He and aged in his early twenties, was chosen
as an adult ruler who might restore the fortunes and energies of the
state. He achieved, however, only limited success, and in 280 he was
compelled to surrender to the Jin state of the Sima family, which had
taken over from Wei and which brought overwhelming force against him.
At the time of the surrender, the population of Wu was reported as 523,000
households, 2,300,000 individuals, 32,000 officials, and 230,000 men
under arms.
Overall, the history of Wu may be divided
into two periods. At first, under Sun Ce and the younger Sun Quan, it
was an energetic and aggressive state, commanded by men of military
skill and achievement. Those officers who came from outside the ranks
of the local gentry, however, depended closely upon the central government
and were seldom able to establish an independent position in the society
of the south. As the opportunities for expansion ended in the 220s,
and the chances of politics and personality took their toll of the fortunes
of the families of these early leaders, local clans and their retainers
came to dominance.
Apart from personal rivalries, therefore,
the faction conflicts of the central government reflect the transfer
of power from the original leaders of the warlord enterprise to the
established local families. Within the palace, cadet branches of the
Sun clan contended for influence, but just as the authority of the ruler
was limited by the rivalry and conflict of the great clans at the capital,
so the central government had limited authority in the daily affairs
of the provinces.
In 253, following the death of Sun Quan, the
general Deng Ai in Wei observed that the great families of Wu, relying
upon their military strength and their retainers, held the essential
power of the state. Those families of the southeast which supported
Sun Ce and Sun Quan in the early years had gained at the expense of
their local rivals, and with the passage of time, they secured their
positions as local magnates. They could be kept under control by the
threat of force and by a system of internal hostages, but they were
not easily overthrown by the chances of politics.
At the basic level, moreover, the government
of Wu, recorded by the histories in terms of generals and ministers
and intrigue at court, relied upon a broad class of village and county
gentry, who might accept provincial office in one commandery or another,
but who had small interest or concern with the politics of the capital.
From this point of view, the same pattern was maintained as in the last
years of Later Han: essential dues were paid to the imperial government,
but the details of its activities were largely irrelevant to local power,
influence and survival.
In its later years, therefore, the state of
Wu was no longer an ambitious warlord enterprise, but a group of magnates
concerned to maintain their wealth and authority. Faced with such a
collection of family interests, operating at every level, the Sun rulers
were never able to establish strong instruments for the control and
development of agriculture and the machinery of war, with which they
might compete efficiently against their rivals. In the end, though the
government of Wu held power through its past military success, it failed
to mobilise its resources to the full and it lacked authority against
local interests within the state.
One achievement, however, was of great importance
for the future. We have noted how the increased population of the south
during Han provided opportunity for the first establishment of the separate
state. From this base, the rulers of Wu sought to increase the numbers
of people and the amount of farmland under their control. In order to
do so, they pressed constantly against the open territory to the south,
to extract manpower and taxation from the isolated groups of non-Chinese
native people and Chinese refugees who had settled earlier beyond the
reach of the government. As each advance was made, the people were registered
as citizens and subjects, and their human and economic resources became
available for further expansion against their neighbours or for defence
against the north. So the expansion and maintenance of the state of
Wu were linked in a policy of warfare and colonisation.
It is difficult to assess the speed of this
process. In the very earliest years of the state, He Qi extended authority
from the isolated coastal counties by present-day Fuzhou up the valleys
of the Min River into present-day Jiangxi and southern Zhejiang, and
subsequent campaigns confirmed control south of the Huang Shan mountains.
In 234, a final assault was launched against the hills people of Danyang,
and this operation, commanded by Zhuge Ke, was a consolidation of Chinese
authority. The process, however, continued elsewhere, sometimes by officially
sponsored campaigns, regularly by small-scale but consistent local aggression,
a steady pressure backed up where necessary by official military force.
One method of assessing the colonisation and
conquests of the state of Wu in the southeast is by comparison of the
counties listed at the time of the census of Later Han, about 140, with
those which appear in the list of the Treatise of Geography of Jin shu, compiled soon after the conquest of Wu in 280. The Jin dynasty
figures for population, based upon a taxation list, cannot be compared
with those of Han, which represent a full census, but the existence
of a county must indicate a real Chinese presence.
On this comparison, the expansion of authority
in the southeast is remarkable. By 280, within the territory of Wu from
the south of the Yangzi to the north of Vietnam, the number of counties
had doubled since the time of Later Han, from 160 to 322, and they were
spread across territories where no such establishment had been seen
before. The frontier had been transformed, and there were newly confirmed
settlements in present-day southern Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Fujian. Though
the initiative for expansion had arisen from the needs of the state
of Wu, the achievement came eventually to benefit the empire of Jin:
driven from the north at the beginning of the fourth century AD, the
émigré court found refuge and security in the lands which
had been developed by Wu.
Shu-Han
If the state of Wu was based upon the military achievement of one local
family and its supporters, the claimant empire of Shu-Han in the west
was the work of an itinerant warlord entrepreneur, and the soldiers
of fortune who accepted his leadership.
The history of Shu-Han, and particularly that
of the founder Liu Bei and his chief minister Zhuge Liang, has been
considerably distorted by the romantic tradition which presents Liu
Bei as a hero of chivalry and Zhuge Liang as a master of warfare and
magic. While Cao Cao is described as the powerful, proud and arrogant
usurper of the imperial mandate, and the men of Wu are often ineffectual
and self-seeking, sometimes treacherous, the government of Shu-Han is
lauded as the true successor of the fallen empire and the centre of
wisdom, courage and loyalty.
It is possible to trace elements of such a
cycle of stories to the Tang period and earlier, but it was well developed
in Song and Yuan, with a great number of dramas in the traditional repertoire,
and it came to full flower with the historical novel Romance of the
Three Kingdoms [Sanguo yanyi]
during Ming. The bias in favour of Shu-Han may also be found in the
comments of the great philosopher Zhu Xi (1130-1200) on "legitimate
succession", while the concept of a "true" government,
still maintained on Chinese soil but exiled from the traditional centre
of power, found popularity not only in Zhu Xi's dynasty of Southern
Song, but also in the modern Republic of China on Taiwan.
Despite this romantic tradition, and although
some modern scholars have sought to use its material as a guide to the
history of the Three Kingdoms, it is important to realise that the novel
and the dramas are not independent sources of information. They are
frequently and sometimes deliberately mistaken in what they recount,
and they are of no more value for the study of the time they purport
to describe than are the plays of Shakespeare for the history of England,
Scotland or Rome.
On the other hand, though we must ignore the
brilliant falsehoods of romance, the history of Shu-Han is still remarkable.
The founder of the state, Liu Bei, came from
Zhuo commandery near present-day Beijing, and he acquired his first
reputation in warfare against the Yellow Turban rebellion of 184. When
civil war broke out in the 190s he served or allied himself with one
warlord after another, and he held short-lived power over substantial
territory in north China. In 200, however, at the time of the campaign
between Cao Cao and Yuan Shao about Guandu, Liu Bei was thoroughly defeated
by Cao Cao's forces and fled to take refuge with Liu Biao.
For the next several years, Liu Bei had no
notable role in the politics of the empire. He did, however, maintain
the followers who had accompanied him into exile, he developed connections
among Liu Biao's own entourage, and it was at this time he met Zhuge
Liang. In 208, when Liu Biao died and Cao Cao came south, Liu Bei established
himself as the chief of those who sought to oppose the surrender. He
was briskly defeated, but fled to seek support from Sun Quan, and after
the victory at the Red Cliffs he established a position in the southern
part of Jing province.
In 211 Liu Bei was invited into Yi province
by the Governor, Liu Zhang, to assist him in dealing with enemies on
his northern borders. Liu Zhang, not a man of military distinction or
great personal authority, sought the borrowed authority and the experienced
army of his nominal "cousin", but a strong party at Liu Zhang's
court was prepared to welcome Liu Bei as ruler of the whole territory.
Liu Bei agreed to their proposal, and little more than a year after
his arrival in the west he turned against his patron and employer. In
the summer of 214 he received Liu Zhang's surrender and established
his own regime at Chengdu.
In 219 the decisive victory over Xiahou Yuan
established Liu Bei's control of the Han valley, and gave justification
for his claim to the royal and then imperial title of Han. Further east,
however, the destruction of Guan Yu, and the failure of Liu Bei's expedition
down the Yangzi three years later, restricted the territory of his state
to Yi province, and despite its imperial pretensions Shu-Han never recovered
from those massive defeats.
When Liu Bei died in 223, his son Liu Shan
was seventeen, but Zhuge Liang acted as regent and held control of the
government. He confirmed the alliance with Wu, and in campaigns to the
south during 224 and 225 he established control of the territory and
people as far as the Dian Lake in present-day Yunnan. In 227 he turned
his attention to the north: from Hanzhong he launched a series of attacks
across the Qin Ling range, and he encouraged defection among the Wei
commanders to the west, in present Hubei. The renegade Meng Ta, however,
was quickly destroyed by the Wei general Sima Yi, and Zhuge Liang was
not able to establish a position. In 229 he did acquire the territory
of Wudu commandery, the southern part of present-day Gansu on the upper
Han valley, and in 233 he embarked on a renewed attempt to break the
line of the mountain barrier. He was, however, successfully opposed
by Sima Yi, and he died in the following year.
After a short period of intrigue and confusion,
Zhuge Liang's position as commander-in-chief and head of government
was taken by Jiang Wan. Like Zhuge Liang, Jiang Wan had his headquarters
in Hanzhong, on the frontier against Wei, and the central administration
at Chengdu was maintained by a secondary office. In 244, Jiang Wan became
ill and left active service, and at his death in 246 Liu Shan, now forty
years old, took formal authority at the capital. Despite his maturity
Liu Shan was an unimpressive ruler. He was accused, probably correctly,
of being more interested in his harem and his personal pleasures than
in the responsibilities of government, and he gave excessive power to
his favourite Chen Zhi and the eunuch Huang Hao.
Though he planned aggressive action, Jiang
Wan had never presented Wei with a serious threat. His position as chief
minister on the frontier was taken by Fei Yi, and when Fei Yi was assassinated
by a renegade from Wei in 251 command in the north was given to the
energetic general Jiang Wei. For the strategists of Shu-Han, an attack
from Hanzhong eastwards down the river against present-day Henan, though
tempting, was put out of consideration by the difficulty of retreat
upstream if the invasion should be defeated. As a result, for the next
ten years, Jiang Wei sought to break the line of the Qin Ling ranges,
primarily through alliance with the non-Chinese Qiang. The men of Wei,
however, consolidated their power with a program of agricultural garrisons,
while the energies and morale of the people of Shu-Han were exhausted
by the years of failure.
In the 260s, after the Sima family had established
control of the government of Wei, they planned the attack on Shu-Han.
In the autumn of 263 they captured the passes into Hanzhong, and while
one army held Jiang Wei in the northwest, the general Deng Ai went forward
against Chengdu. In the winter, after victory in one pitched battle,
he received the surrender of Liu Shan. There was a brief period of intrigue
and confusion as Deng Ai was dismissed and then assassinated, while
Jiang Wei and a rebel commander of Wei, Zhong Hui, sought to establish
an independent position, but the plotters were killed, and in the summer
of 264 Liu Shan was received into honoured exile at Luoyang.
At the time of the surrender the population
of Shu-Han was reported as 280,000 households, 940,000 individuals,
40,000 officials, and 102,000 men under arms. The registered population
of Yi province under Later Han had been seven and a quarter million,
and even the three commanderies about Chengdu had numbered more than
575,000 households with two and a quarter million individuals. In the
Treatise of Geography of Jin shu, which preserves the figures for
tax assessment some twenty years later, the population of the territory
is just over 300,000 households. This is compatible with the record
of Shu-Han, and clearly indicates a quota system of taxation, rather
than a decline in the number of people physically inhabiting the province.
No government of this time was able to maintain the same level of control
as had the local administrators of Han, and the nominal losses of population
were much the same over all the divided empire.
On the other hand, though the state of Wu
had made some attempt to establish a structure of government which might
echo the traditions of Han, Shu-Han appears to have had no more than
the most basic civil administration. After the death of Zhuge Liang,
the office of Chancellor was ended. Jiang Wan held his senior position
with the title Marshal of State, and Fei Yi, head of government at Chengdu,
was General-in-Chief, Intendant of the Secretariat and Governor of Yi
province. Soon after Jiang Wan's death, Fei Yi moved to campaign headquarters
in Hanzhong, and Jiang Wei, also with command in the north, became Intendant
of the Secretariat. So the senior officials of the state held military
titles, and were regularly engaged in war, while civilian matters at
Chengdu were in the hands of Liu Shan and his favourites. In such circumstances,
the administration of Shu-Han was that of a warlord regime, with emphasis
on the recruitment and supply of troops and on the personal interests
of the chieftain. There were, of course, clerical offices to support
the work, but it was not a government for long-term planning and development.
One effect of this limitation may be seen
in the relationship of the government of Shu-Han with the lands of the
south. When Liu Bei seized power at Chengdu in 214, he established the
divisional office of Laixiang to administer the southern part of his
territory, and the campaigns of Zhuge Liang of the mid-220s destroyed
the non-Chinese alliance led by Meng Huo. It should be observed, however,
that the settlement imposed on the defeated tribes by Zhuge Liang left
the people under continuing control by their native leaders, and confirmed
that power with seals and other emblems of authority. In formal terms,
they were subjects of Shu-Han, but the records refer to several later
rebellions in the southern commanderies, and although the people were
brought under control without great difficulty, they did not add notably
to the resources of the state.
In this respect, we may contrast the policy
of Shu-Han with that of Wu, where conquest of new territory was followed
by firm colonisation and the establishment of new units for local control.
While the number of counties in the territory of Wu had doubled during
the century and a half between the census of Later Han and the register
of Jin, in the territory of Shu-Han there was a net gain of just twenty
percent, and there was no program of development.
In sum, once Sun Quan had confirmed his hold
on the middle Yangzi, the only areas of expansion for Shu-Han lay to
the north and the south. Southwards, the government of Zhuge Liang and
his successors contented themselves with a general authority, but they
did not develop the human and material resources they had acquired.
Instead, they concentrated their efforts upon the north and exhausted
their limited strength in futile aggression. Shu-Han was founded as
a warlord enterprise in a provincial state, and it never became anything
more.
Wei
and the Sima family
In comparison with Shu-Han, with Wu and with
the Gongsun family of the northeast, the state of Wei established by
Cao Cao must be regarded as effective successor to the fallen empire
of Han. Apart from the formality of the abdication by Emperor Xian to
Cao Pi in 220, Wei controlled the heart-lands of China and some seventy
per cent of the formerly registered population. The achievement, of
course, has been recognised by traditional historians, but there has
also been long debate on the reasons for the failure of Wei to reunite
the whole of the empire, and this has led to criticism of the state
and its rulers, either for lack of enterprise or for lack of moral virtue.
We have noted, however, that the increased population of China south
of the Yangzi, and the military competence of the government of Sun
Quan, made the conquest of that territory extremely difficult - and
while Shu-Han in the west remained independent, the northern regime
was faced with two substantial opponents who could not be eliminated
quickly. Indeed, rather than criticising Cao Cao for not restoring the
whole empire of Han, one should admire his achievement in successfully
re-establishing government in the north.
On all evidence, the break-down of imperial
authority at the end of the second century AD was far more serious than
it had been at the beginning of the first. At the simplest level of
calculation, the earlier period of full civil war lasted only fifteen
years, from the rebellion against Wang Mang in 22 to Emperor Guangwu's
defeat of his last major enemy, Gongsun Shu in 36. In contrast, by 207,
when Cao Cao had established full dominance over the Yellow plain, the
structure of Han government had disappeared, the empire had been devastated
by twenty years of turmoil, and later events would prove that control
of central China no longer guaranteed control of the periphery.
This political and military perspective partly
concealed an important change in Chinese society. At the beginning of
Later Han, the reunification of the empire had depended to some extent
upon the support which Emperor Guangwu obtained from leading clans and
local families, and the power of the government had been substantially
limited by its political debts. In the two hundred years which followed,
gentry control in the countryside grew steadily, with land, tenants,
clients and armed retainers, and the authority of the court and the
capital became proportionately weaker. The collapse of authority in
civil war confirmed this development, and presented both the opportunity
and the necessity for non-official organisations for self-protection.
The problem facing Cao Cao was twofold: on
the one hand, there were great numbers of refugees, driven from their
homes by war and famine, and at the same time there were numerous local
organisations which had taken responsibility for many of the people,
and which offered a low-level competition for legitimacy and power.
Many of these organisations, often described as "bandits"
or "rebels" were formed amongst the peasants, and they sometimes
took the form of clan groupings or religious associations. The great
majority of dispossessed or uncertain people, however, gathered about
some local magnate, and through this pattern of commutation the power
of gentry clans, which had already been great under Later Han, came
to dominate the local economy, society and administration. The restoration
of full imperial power required not merely victory in war, but also
the re-establishment or replacement of a system of government which
had been growing steadily less effective for some two hundred years.
At an early stage of the civil war, about
196, Cao Cao established a number of "agricultural garrisons"
(tuntian) in the neighbourhood of Xu city,
his chief headquarters. There was arable land nearby which had been
abandoned by refugees and was available to the government, and it was
sensible and appropriate that surplus people should be allocated the
empty fields. The distinctive point about the new system, however, was
that the farmers maintained a direct relationship with the government,
that they were granted supplies and material assistance, and that they
returned a regular share of produce to the imperial granaries and treasury.
Traditionally, under the Han dynasty, a tax
had been levied upon each subject's land-holding, while other government
exactions, such as poll tax, civil corvee and military conscription
or payment for substitutes, placed a heavy burden on the peasant farmer.
The opportunities for corruption and confusion, and for false reporting
and evasion, were very great, particularly since the bureaucrats responsible
for the collection of the revenues tended to come from the land-owning
families themselves. The new agricultural garrisons, through concentration
upon sharing the yield, removed the need for surveys of the quantity
and quality of the land, and by placing the peasants under the direct
control of the government the system eliminated the influences of private
interest.
A good deal of debate took place before this
policy on sharing production was determined. Since the government was
providing the land and farming equipment, notably including oxen for
the heavy work of ploughing, there were many who argued that the farmers
should be required to pay a fixed rental, regardless of the value of
the crop. Cao Cao's adviser Zao Zhi, however, argued that the government
levy should be taken as a percentage of the yield, not as a fixed sum:
the share-cropping system provided a steady incentive towards higher
production, and although a fixed sum might appear more likely to produce
a guaranteed return, it would still be necessary to reduce payments
in time of poor harvest. This was agreed, and it appears that the government
received 50% of the annual yield from the tenant of a garrison, or 60%
when the oxen used were owned by the state.
The first garrisons were set up under the
administration of Ren Jun, close adviser to Cao Cao, who was appointed
Commissioner for Agriculture with authority comparable to that of the
head of a commandery, and the system was extended through many areas
of Cao Cao's control. It was not, however, universally applied, and
not all agricultural garrisons were set up directly by the central government.
North of the Yellow River, it appears that there was regular household
and land tax, with agricultural garrisons in only a few places of particular
local need, and in the region of the Huai River the local commander
Liu Fu organised a number of settlements which appear to have remained
under the supervision of his office.
Though earlier agricultural garrisons had
been set up primarily for military purposes - and those established
by Liu Fu were indeed established to maintain the frontier against Wu
- Cao Cao's system was designed as much for the value of its civilian
production as for military defence. Tenants of the garrisons were naturally
expected to be able to protect themselves in time of emergency, and
on occasion they could take part in major work on dams and canals, but
they were not conscripted for general corvee labour, nor for military
service - their function was to produce food, the sinews of war, and
they were protected from any interference with that duty.
As a means of physical and political resettlement,
the agricultural garrisons were remarkably successful, for they confirmed
Cao Cao's control of the ground and gave the migrant peasants a new
commitment to the regime which had sponsored them. Economically, the
system deployed the resources of land and people on terms which provided
regular supplies for government and the army. Comparatively speaking,
however, the production of the agricultural garrisons was only a fraction
of the resources of the Cao Cao's territory, and it was still necessary
for the new regime to establish formal links of authority and service
with the many local centres of power. It was in these circumstances
that Cao Cao began the system of appointments by Nine Ranks and Categories
(jiupin) and when Cao Pi succeeded
his father in 220, the structure was established in the state of Wei.
Traditionally under Han, recruitment into
the imperial service had been through recommendation of a candidate,
generally followed by a period of probation at the capital, and then
appointment to substantive office. The majority of recommendations had
been made in the form of "Filial and Incorrupt" (xiaolian)
by the administration of the commandery to which the candidate belonged.
Theoretically, the judgement of a nominee's worth was made on the basis
of his local reputation, confirmed where appropriate by supervision
at court. By the end of Han, however, through their natural alliance
with peers and colleagues in local government, selection had come largely
into the hands of the local gentry, and the program was rather a source
of influence for great families than a reliable means of obtaining servants
for the state. Under the stress of civil war, moreover, the system had
broken down entirely, and Cao Cao was compelled to seek some other means
to recruit men of ability without encouraging the existing tendencies
to local authority and separatism.
Formally, the new system echoed the old principles
of choice based upon local reputation, "nomination from the district
and selection by the village", and those who were put forward had
their characters described in terms similar to those of the "pure
judgements" fashionable among scholars and gentlemen in the later
years of Han. Despite this air of legitimate tradition and honest reform,
however, such a system in practice could only confirm the opportunity
for local men of power to influence the recommendations.
To guard against self-serving, corrupt and
false nominations, the central government of Wei appointed Rectifiers
to each commandery, officials whose duty was to assess the quality of
the candidates for office, and to grade them in terms of suitability
and potential. In this respect, they carried out one of the functions
of a Grand Administrator under Han, but there were two notable differences:
firstly that these officials were specialists in such judgements, acting
as censors for local nominations and secondly that whereas in Han times
senior local officials were deliberately appointed to hold office outside
their home country, the Rectifiers were required to supervise their
own native territory. They were, however, commissioned from the capital,
and it was hoped that they would act rather as informed agents of the
state than as representatives of purely local interests.
The judgement of the Rectifiers was expressed
by allocation of each candidate to one of nine categories, backed by
a summary description of his character. In similar fashion, all offices
in the empire were graded into nine ranks, although there was no necessary
correlation between the category of an official and the rank of his
current office. The category was rather a judgement of potential, and
men of the highest category were regarded as eligible for appointment
to the highest positions.
Though there were a number of subordinates
to assist the Rectifiers in their work, and some senior officials with
different titles were established at provincial level, there were frequent
complaints that the officers were over-extended, so they could not make
full investigation of the multitude of candidates. Predictably, there
were also accusations of favouritism, many of them justified, and in
practice it appears that the system became the means by which men of
good family entrenched themselves in power. In a celebrated memorial
presented during the early years of Western Jin, Liu Yi criticised the
arbitrary power of these officials, claiming that:
there are no men of humble family in the highest
categories, nor do any representatives of powerful clans appear among
the lower ranks.
And the modern Japanese scholar Tanigawa Michio has observed that:
it was the aristocratic stratum in the Six Dynasties
which... established itself as a ruling class. The most concrete, structural
manifestation of their institutionalization was the Nine Ranks recruitment
system for the bureaucracy.
The system had been designed to satisfy the claims of leading local
families to a role in the government, but to maintain some control over
the full exercise of their influence. In the long term, given the power
of the great clans, the attempt was doomed to failure, and the state
of Wei remained vulnerable to the ambitions of its mighty subjects.
There was, in this respect, critical disagreement
between the new regime of the Cao family and the ambitions of other
great clans in the reconstituted empire. While men of good family looked
naturally for a continuation of the processes which had developed under
Han, with increasing autonomy for their local interests and power, Cao
Cao and his associates sought the restoration of good order through
strong central government, with laws and administration which would
bring an end to the weakness and disorder that bedevilled the last century
of Han. In summary terms, while the government of Cao Cao looked for
a "Legalist" or "Modernist" solution to the political
crisis, their leading subjects were concerned with the status and power
of their families, justified by a "Confucian", "Reformist"
morality.
The authority and legitimacy of the state
of Wei was based upon success in civil war and a special relationship
with the tradition of Han. Through more than twenty years, Cao Cao developed
a parallel administration whereby he himself held nominal position as
chief servant of the dynasty, but also maintained a separate administrative
and military structure under his own command. When his son and successor
Cao Pi received the abdication of Emperor Xian of Han and took the imperial
title for himself, it was indeed generally accepted that the Mandate
of Heaven had changed, and that the power of Earth, represented by the
colour yellow, had succeeded to the Fire and red of Han.
Besides its military strength, and the mystical
authority which could be claimed from Han, the new regime enhanced its
position with the outward signs of power and prosperity. The three chief
cities, Luoyang which had been the capital of Later Han, Xu city the
residence of Emperor Xian, and Ye city the former headquarters of Yuan
Shao, now centre of the administration of Wei, were each restored and
adorned with monuments. In 212, when his Copper Bird Terrace on the
walls of Ye city was completed, Cao Cao had his sons celebrate the occasion
by composing a rhapsody. His third son Cao Zhi, then ten years old,
wrote:
On a pleasure-tour with the brilliant ruler,
we climb the storied terrace with feelings
of delight
We see all the palace stretched out below,
and we gaze upon the works of wisdom and
virtue:
He has raised great gates like rugged hills,
he has floated twin turrets into the clouds,
He has built a splendid tower to reach the
heavens,
he has joined flying bridges to the western
walls.
We look down to the long thread of the Zhang
River,
we look out to the flourishing growth of
the orchards
We lift our heads to the gentle majesty of
the spring breeze,
and we hear the competing cries of a hundred
birds.
The heavenly work is established firm as a
wall,
the wishes of our house are brought to fulfilment,
Good influence reaches all the world,
and every respect and reverence is paid
to the capital
Though the hegemons of the past were magnificent,
how can they compare to your wisdom and
virtue?
Cao Cao was impressed, and the theme and the author symbolize two notable
aspects of the state of Wei. Though the rhapsody is not one of his finest
works, Cao Zhi is admired as one of the greatest poets of China. Cao
Cao himself was skilled in both poetry and prose, his eldest son and
heir Cao Pi had real ability as a composer and scholar of literature,
and Cao Pi's son Cao Rui was also respected as a poet.
This succession of talented rulers, moreover,
gathered and sponsored a host of poets, writers and scholars, respected
and admired in their own time and in subsequent generations, who gave
an intellectual splendour to what might otherwise have been no more
than a military government. The details of their achievement must be
analysed elsewhere, but we may recognise that the abilities of the Cao
family, in association with such men as Wang Can and the other Masters
of the Jian'an reign period, represent a flowering of culture which
is one of the glories of early Chinese civilisation, and the leadership
of the new government was strengthened by this gathering of distinguished
men at court.
As for any state developed in such a time
of crisis and continuing tension, the structure of power at the centre
of Wei was by no means certain or secure. By good fortune, Cao Cao lived
to the age of sixty-five, and Cao Pi his eldest son, succeeded him as
a mature man of thirty-four. There had been, however, some question
whether Cao Zhi, third son of Cao Cao, might not have been named his
successor, and the second son, Cao Zhang, a competent and experienced
military commander, held some hopes for himself. One reason Cao Pi arranged
to receive the imperial title from Emperor Xian so soon after his father's
death was to confirm his position at the head of the government.
Moreover, Cao Pi also removed his brothers
and half-brothers from any further possibility of threat or rivalry.
They were swiftly despatched to the territories of their nominal fiefs,
they were kept under constant observation, and they were transferred,
demoted, or restored in title at frequent intervals. Very occasionally,
they were permitted formal visits to the capital, but they were not
allowed any place in the government.
This firm isolation of the emperor's male
relatives remained an established policy of Wei, and it reflected the
practice of Han. Cao Pi, however, considering the troubles which had
beset the imperial Liu family through the involvement of great families
of relatives by marriage, also ordered that the empress-dowager should
have no involvement in government, and no member of the clan of an imperial
consort should hold position as a regent. The Lady Bian, dowager of
Cao Cao and mother of Cao Pi, was a former sing-song girl, the Lady
Guo, chosen Empress of Cao Pi, came of minor gentry stock and had at
one time been a servant, and the father of Cao Rui's first Empress Mao
had been a yamen runner. It seems very probable the latter two consorts
were deliberately chosen from families which could offer no rivalry
to the Cao family. The policies of exclusion, one old and one new, removed
two sources of potential disturbance from the court, but they also deprived
the imperial lineage of some prestige and political support, and compelled
the ruler to rely chiefly upon cadet branches of the family or other
clans allied through marriage to princesses.
The effect of the new system was shown in
226, when Cao Pi died at the age of forty. His eldest son Cao Rui, twenty-two
years old, came to the throne as an adult, but four regent advisers
were appointed for him: the minister Chen Qun, the generals Cao Zhen
and Cao Xiu, who were distantly related to the imperial family, and
the general Sima Yi. In practice, the new emperor was permitted to manage
affairs for himself, but the combination of guardians reflected the
balance of influence which supported the throne. Within a few years,
moreover, Cao Zhen, Cao Xiu and Chen Qun were dead, and Sima Yi was
the senior minister and military commander of the empire.
The Sima family were a respected, old-established,
and wide-ranging family from Henei commandery. Sima Yi's elder brother
Sima Lang had joined Cao Cao early in the civil war, and Sima Yi, who
first held office at the puppet court of Han, followed him in 208 and
served on the staff of Cao Cao's headquarters. In 217 he became a member
of the suite of Cao Pi as Heir Apparent, and he was evidently a personal
friend. When Cao Pi came to the throne, Sima Yi received steadily higher
appointments, and in 224 and 225 he was left in charge of domestic affairs
while the emperor took the field against Wu.
A few months after Cao Pi's death in 226,
Sima Yi took command in the field for the first time, driving back a
secondary attack of Wu against Xiangyang, and in the following year
he was given responsibility for military affairs on the Han River. Although
he was in his late forties, and his previous experience had been civil
and administrative, he proved to be an energetic and competent general,
and during the next ten years he held command in the south against Wu
and in the west against Shu-Han.
In 238 Sima Yi was recalled from his headquarters
at Chang'an to take command of an offensive against Gongsun Yuan of
Manchuria. In a swift, powerful campaign he brushed aside Gongsun Yuan's
defences on the Liao River, captured his capital Xiangping, and exterminated
the warlord government. So the northeast was brought into the domain
of Wei, and a further series of campaigns in 244-245, under the general
Guanqiu Jian, broke the power of the non-Chinese state of Koguryo and
removed any immediate threat from that region of the frontier. The Chinese
military position in the northeast was now the strongest it had been
since the time of Emperor Wu and Former Han, and its political authority
is reflected in a series of embassies which came to the court of Wei
from the Japanese female ruler Pimiko.
In 239, at the age of thirty-five, Cao Rui
died. He had no sons of his own body, and his adopted successor was
a seven-year-old boy, Cao Fang, who was surely a close member of the
imperial family, but whose exact parentage was officially unknown. Cao
Rui had replaced the Lady Mao with a new Empress, the Lady Guo, a woman
of respectable family, but in accordance with the policy of Cao Pi her
relatives were kept from power. For a time Cao Rui contemplated a council
of regency which would be dominated by members of the imperial lineage,
but he was finally persuaded to nominate only two men: Cao Shuang, son
of the former regent Cao Zhen, and Sima Yi.
From the beginning of the joint regency, chief
power at court was in the hands of Cao Shuang. Sima Yi was given the
honourable title of Grand Tutor, but he was not encouraged to play any
substantial role, and he concentrated rather upon military enterprises.
Unlike his father and grandfather, Cao Rui had taken no part in military
affairs, Cao Fang was still too young to do so, and Cao Shuang recorded
only a single unsuccessful campaign against the frontier of Shu-Han.
Sima Yi, in contrast, was a distinguished commander, with wide support
in the army and among men of good family outside the circle of the court.
In the cultural history of China the Zhengshi
reign period from 240 to 249, the time of Cao Shuang's regency, is a
moment of intellectual brilliance when the tradition of Confucianism,
almost exhausted by the sterilities of Han, was revived for a time under
the influence of Taoism and in particular by association with xuanxue, "The Study of the Mysteries." Among the leaders
of this intellectual trend were He Yan, a close associate of Cao Shuang,
and his friend Wang Bi, one of the greatest interpreters of the Yi jing )v8g the Book of Changes.
The social attitudes and personal conduct
of this group of intellectuals and scholars, however, though fitting
with the freedom of their philosophical attitudes, did not win wide
approval or respect. He Yan, son of a concubine of Cao Cao, was elegant
and arrogant, a scholar of the Laozi,
brilliant in the repartee and dialectic of "pure conversation"
(qingtan). Under Cao Shuang, as a member of the imperial secretariat,
he had considerable influence on official appointments, and brought
many of his colleagues to court. He had a reputation, however, as a
libertine, and he and his associates were devotees of the ecstatic drug
known as the Five Minerals Powder.
In many respects, the attitude of He Yan and
his friends was comparable to the ideal of "spontaneity" and
going "beyond the bounds" which was followed by their contemporaries
Ruan Ji, Xi Kang and other Sages of the Bamboo Grove. These men, of
good background and great talent, represented a movement which sought
to avoid meaningless formality, and which deliberately opposed the traditions
accepted by standard Confucianism. The attitudes of He Yan and his associates
can be readily understood in the context of the society of their time,
but their conduct was exaggerated both in reality and in the propaganda
of their enemies. In political terms, He Yan appears to have been the
only member of the group interested in substantial office, but Cao Shuang
and all the court were affected by his reputation. In the earlier years
of Wei, the literary life of the capital added lustre and authority
to the new regime. Now, in a sad reversal, the excesses attributed to
He Yan and his clique became an embarrassment, and Sima Yi was able
to present himself as the representative for men of good family who
sought Confucian reform, morality and restraint in politics and society.
In 247 Cao Shuang and his associates introduced
a number of administrative and legal changes to enhance the central
power which they controlled. Sima Yi pretended illness and ostensibly
retired from public life, but at the beginning of 249, as the emperor
and Cao Shuang were on a visit to the dynastic tombs outside Luoyang,
Sima Yi gathered troops for a coup
d'état, seized the cortege and massacred Cao Shuang, his
colleagues and their kinsmen. From this time on, the state of Wei was
in the hands of the Sima family.
In 251, two years after the coup, Sima Yi
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